Hotel: Nordica +Golden Circle +Thingvellir +Geysir +Gullfoss +Blue Lagoon We planned on visiting the Golden Circle today. This is the popular tourist circuit from Reykjavik that takes in the historical site of Thingvellir, and the natural wonders of Geysir and the Gullfoss waterfall. We lucked out with the weather today as well, as it was supposed to be clear all day. [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: Radisson SAS Riga +Trakai +Siauliai We got off to a slow start out of Vilnius this morning. We almost missed breakfast after sleeping in until nearly 10:00. The restaurant had tiled images on the walls of stylized Soviet workers. There was a basket of beautifully decorated Easter eggs sitting at the bar. The breakfast at the Scandic was Ok and had the basics of fruit, sausages, and Lithuanian pancakes (blynai or blintzes). We had planned to rent a car today and drive up to Riga via the Lithuanian towns of Trakai and Siauliai. I had made a reservation with Alamo [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: Sheraton Metechi Palace (Tbilisi, Georgia) $0 I had reserved an award at the Sheraton Metechi Palace in Tbilisi for our final night in Tbilisi. The hotel isn't very convenient for the rest of town, being along the road to the airport about 8 blocks east of the Lile Hotel. My wife and I walked over this morning and claimed our bag that we had left earlier this week. The Sheraton isn't much to look at from the outside (Lonely Planet describes it as a Swedish prison); but the rooms inside were quite comfortable. The breakfast buffet was decent, and afterwards [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: Hotel Lile (Tbilisi, Georgia) $40 After a decent breakfast, a taxi driver arrived and we set off for Vardzia, the cave city. The landscape soon changed from rolling meadows to more mountainous terrain. The driver had agreed to take us to Vardzia and Akhaltsikhe (~50 miles) for $50. The road was in pretty bad shape for most of the trip, and our driver was flying along. Vardzia is a cave city located about 15 miles off the Akhalkalaki to Akhaltsikhe road, the royal city in the late 1100's consisted of over 700 caves carved into the cliffsides, supporting a population [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: EuroStar Hotel (Akhalkalaki, Georgia) $40 This morning we planned on visiting the town of Echmiadzin, the Armenian Vatican, home to the Armenian Orthodox church. We planned to take a minibus there, and taxi back. The minibus depot was about 10 blocks away and so we climbed into a taxi for the short ride. Once we were at the depot, the taxi driver started getting animated, I think he wanted us to take the taxi instead of the minibus; it would have been cheaper to take the minibus of course. We finally decided to take the taxi there and back, as [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: SIL Hotel (Yerevan, Armenia) $75 We wasted a lot of time this morning trying to find a bank that would cash D's AmEx travellers checks; no place wanted to take them (even with the AMEX symbol on the door!) We finally found a place that supposedly would cash them. My wife's ankle had been acting up, while he was inside the bank we sat down on the steps outside to give it a rest. A guard came out and motioned that we couldn't sit there. So we walked across the street and sat on the curb. She still kept giving [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: SIL Hotel (Yerevan, Armenia) $75 Visa at border: $30 $1 USD = 440 Armenian Dram We arrived at the Ortachala bus station this morning around 7:30 AM. The minibus to Yerevan was scheduled to depart at 8AM ($12.50). We were only planning on going as far as Alaverdi, in Armenia, to visit the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Sanahin and Haghput. We arrived at the border around 9:30; the driver asked if we had visas for Armenia, he then let us go through the border post ahead of the others when we motioned that we would be buying them on [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: Hotel Lile (Tbilisi, Georgia) $40 Woke up this morning to an absolutely clear sky; the view out the window of our hotel was stunning with the Tsminda church high above and the snowcapped peak of Mt. Kazbek behind it. We hoped to catch one of the early marshrutkas to Tbilisi around 8 AM; we were lucky to catch one that actually left 20 minutes early. The fare was 8 GEL ($4.50) for the 4 hr ride back to Tbilisi. Originally, we had been planning on going all the way through to Armenia today, but decided to spend an extra afternoon [View Full Entry]

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Overnight train to Tbilisi $26 Since we had been so busy yesterday, we took things slowly this morning. We met an Australian woman staying at our hotel who had recently come from Tbilisi, and she recommended a hotel. After breakfast at the bakery down the street we left our laundry with the lady at the hotel. We only had one other sight we had wanted to see, the Fire Temple in nearby Suraxani. We went by the station again to check on the local train, but weren't able to find one, so we hopped in a cab again. Suraxani is located [View Full Entry]

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Hotel: Velotrek Hotel (Baku, Azerbaijan) $30 The plan today was to visit the petroglyphs at Qobustan, a village about 50km south of Baku. We wandered outside the hotel into the taxi melee to find someone to drive us there. The Lonely Planet book had said it was only a $20 trip, but noone would back down from $50. Most people didn't seem to know where it was we were going either. We finally chose a Saddam Hussein looking guy, who said he had been in the Afghanistan war (Russian side). He didn't speak English, but a friend of his did, so [View Full Entry]

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